Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens (i love reading .TXT) 📗

crouched upon the cold stone floor outside it, every night, to listen even for his breath; and in her one absorbing wish to be allowed to show him some affection, to be a consolation to him, to win him over to the endurance of some tenderness from her, his solitary child, she would have knelt down at his feet, if she had dared, in humble supplication.

No one knew it. No one thought of it. The door was ever closed, and he shut up within. He went out once or twice, and it was said in the house that he was very soon going on his country journey; but he lived in those rooms, and lived alone, and never saw her, or inquired for her. Perhaps he did not even know that she was in the house.

One day, about a week after the funeral, Florence was sitting at her work, when Susan appeared, with a face half laughing and half crying, to announce a visitor.

‘A visitor! To me, Susan!’ said Florence, looking up in astonishment.

‘Well, it is a wonder, ain’t it now, Miss Floy?’ said Susan; ‘but I wish you had a many visitors, I do, indeed, for you’d be all the better for it, and it’s my opinion that the sooner you and me goes even to them old Skettleses, Miss, the better for both, I may not wish to live in crowds, Miss Floy, but still I’m not a oyster.’

To do Miss Nipper justice, she spoke more for her young mistress than herself; and her face showed it.

‘But the visitor, Susan,’ said Florence.

Susan, with an hysterical explosion that was as much a laugh as a sob, and as much a sob as a laugh, answered,

‘Mr Toots!’

The smile that appeared on Florence’s face passed from it in a moment, and her eyes filled with tears. But at any rate it was a smile, and that gave great satisfaction to Miss Nipper.

‘My own feelings exactly, Miss Floy,’ said Susan, putting her apron to her eyes, and shaking her head. ‘Immediately I see that Innocent in the Hall, Miss Floy, I burst out laughing first, and then I choked.’

Susan Nipper involuntarily proceeded to do the like again on the spot. In the meantime Mr Toots, who had come upstairs after her, all unconscious of the effect he produced, announced himself with his knuckles on the door, and walked in very briskly.

‘How d’ye do, Miss Dombey?’ said Mr Toots. ‘I’m very well, I thank you; how are you?’

Mr Toots—than whom there were few better fellows in the world, though there may have been one or two brighter spirits—had laboriously invented this long burst of discourse with the view of relieving the feelings both of Florence and himself. But finding that he had run through his property, as it were, in an injudicious manner, by squandering the whole before taking a chair, or before Florence had uttered a word, or before he had well got in at the door, he deemed it advisable to begin again.

‘How d’ye do, Miss Dombey?’ said Mr Toots. ‘I’m very well, I thank you; how are you?’

Florence gave him her hand, and said she was very well.

‘I’m very well indeed,’ said Mr Toots, taking a chair. ‘Very well indeed, I am. I don’t remember,’ said Mr Toots, after reflecting a little, ‘that I was ever better, thank you.’

‘It’s very kind of you to come,’ said Florence, taking up her work, ‘I am very glad to see you.’

Mr Toots responded with a chuckle. Thinking that might be too lively, he corrected it with a sigh. Thinking that might be too melancholy, he corrected it with a chuckle. Not thoroughly pleasing himself with either mode of reply, he breathed hard.

‘You were very kind to my dear brother,’ said Florence, obeying her own natural impulse to relieve him by saying so. ‘He often talked to me about you.’

‘Oh it’s of no consequence,’ said Mr Toots hastily. ‘Warm, ain’t it?’

‘It is beautiful weather,’ replied Florence.

‘It agrees with me!’ said Mr Toots. ‘I don’t think I ever was so well as I find myself at present, I’m obliged to you.

After stating this curious and unexpected fact, Mr Toots fell into a deep well of silence.

‘You have left Dr Blimber’s, I think?’ said Florence, trying to help him out.

‘I should hope so,’ returned Mr Toots. And tumbled in again.

He remained at the bottom, apparently drowned, for at least ten minutes. At the expiration of that period, he suddenly floated, and said,

‘Well! Good morning, Miss Dombey.’

‘Are you going?’ asked Florence, rising.

‘I don’t know, though. No, not just at present,’ said Mr Toots, sitting down again, most unexpectedly. ‘The fact is—I say, Miss Dombey!’

‘Don’t be afraid to speak to me,’ said Florence, with a quiet smile, ‘I should be very glad if you would talk about my brother.’

‘Would you, though?’ retorted Mr Toots, with sympathy in every fibre of his otherwise expressionless face. ‘Poor Dombey! I’m sure I never thought that Burgess and Co.—fashionable tailors (but very dear), that we used to talk about—would make this suit of clothes for such a purpose.’ Mr Toots was dressed in mourning. ‘Poor Dombey! I say! Miss Dombey!’ blubbered Toots.

‘Yes,’ said Florence.

‘There’s a friend he took to very much at last. I thought you’d lIke to have him, perhaps, as a sort of keepsake. You remember his remembering Diogenes?’

‘Oh yes! oh yes’ cried Florence.

‘Poor Dombey! So do I,’ said Mr Toots.

Mr Toots, seeing Florence in tears, had great difficulty in getting beyond this point, and had nearly tumbled into the well again. But a chuckle saved him on the brink.

‘I say,’ he proceeded, ‘Miss Dombey! I could have had him stolen for ten shillings, if they hadn’t given him up: and I would: but they were glad to get rid of him, I think. If you’d like to have him, he’s at the door. I brought him on purpose for you. He ain’t a lady’s dog, you know,’ said Mr Toots, ‘but you won’t mind that, will you?’

In fact, Diogenes was at that moment, as they presently ascertained from looking down into the street, staring through the window of a hackney cabriolet, into which, for conveyance to that spot, he had been ensnared, on a false pretence of rats among the straw. Sooth to say, he was as unlike a lady’s dog as might be; and in his gruff anxiety to get out, presented an appearance sufficiently unpromising, as he gave short yelps out of one side of his mouth, and overbalancing himself by the intensity of every one of those efforts, tumbled down into the straw, and then sprung panting up again, putting out his tongue, as if he had come express to a Dispensary to be examined for his health.

But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with on a summer’s day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headed dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was far from good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice; he was dearer to Florence, in virtue of that parting remembrance of him, and that request that he might be taken care of, than the most valuable and beautiful of his kind. So dear, indeed, was this same ugly Diogenes, and so welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand of Mr Toots and kissed it in her gratitude. And when Diogenes, released, came tearing up the stairs and bouncing into the room (such a business as there was, first, to get him out of the cabriolet!), dived under all the furniture, and wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his neck, round legs of chairs and tables, and then tugged at it until his eyes became unnaturally visible, in consequence of their nearly starting out of his head; and when he growled at Mr Toots, who affected familiarity; and went pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that he was the enemy whom he had barked at round the corner all his life and had never seen yet; Florence was as pleased with him as if he had been a miracle of discretion.

Mr Toots was so overjoyed by the success of his present, and was so delighted to see Florence bending down over Diogenes, smoothing his coarse back with her little delicate hand—Diogenes graciously allowing it from the first moment of their acquaintance—that he felt it difficult to take leave, and would, no doubt, have been a much longer time in making up his mind to do so, if he had not been assisted by Diogenes himself, who suddenly took it into his head to bay Mr Toots, and to make short runs at him with his mouth open. Not exactly seeing his way to the end of these demonstrations, and sensible that they placed the pantaloons constructed by the art of Burgess and Co. in jeopardy, Mr Toots, with chuckles, lapsed out at the door: by which, after looking in again two or three times, without any object at all, and being on each occasion greeted with a fresh run from Diogenes, he finally took himself off and got away.

‘Come, then, Di! Dear Di! Make friends with your new mistress. Let us love each other, Di!’ said Florence, fondling his shaggy head. And Di, the rough and gruff, as if his hairy hide were pervious to the tear that dropped upon it, and his dog’s heart melted as it fell, put his nose up to her face, and swore fidelity.